“How interesting,” he said, looking over at Ela, then up at me. “And yet, your Wingmates tell such vivid stories.…”
I could feel all my work unraveling, my plans torn apart like rotten nets, everything I’d hoped to catch sliding silently through and away. If Ruc discovered the truth, our tenuous partnership was over. There would be no more boat trips out to the remote delta to look at bodies, no more kisses, no more opportunities to try to shape the space between us into something that resembled love. At best, he’d stop trusting me; at worst—if Kossal actually convinced him we were servants of Ananshael—he’d try to have us captured and executed. At which point I could either flee or fight, neither of which would get me any closer to completing my Trial.
Ela leaned across the table toward Ruc, murmuring from behind a cupped hand. “Kossal takes mission security very seriously.” She winked.
I sat down at last, heavy and ungraceful, as though someone had hacked my legs from underneath me.
“Kossal is a horse’s itchy, fly-bitten nutsack,” I said grimly. I was looking at Ela, not Ruc. “And so are you.”
Kossal grunted. I could see him take another pull on the bottle out of the corner of my eye. “Fly-bitten nutsack doesn’t sound all wrong,” he conceded. “More accurate than Kettral, anyway.”
Ela met my eyes, raised her hands helplessly. “He’s ungovernable. What can I say?”
“The thing is,” Ruc cut in, “we do have a government in this city. And it’s my job to make sure that government stays right where it is. So when strangers show up claiming to be Kettral, then claiming not to be Kettral, I start to experience what I can only describe as a more than mild concern.”
He didn’t look concerned. Ruc didn’t pick at his fingernails or chew the inside of his cheek. He hadn’t raised his voice when he spoke. Well before I met him, he’d filed off all the tics and habits that might broadcast his play before he made it. Anyone else on the deck who happened to glance over would see a man nearing his thirtieth year, serious but relaxed, one bare, well-muscled arm tossed over the back of his chair, the other resting casually on his knee. I saw the violence beneath, boiling like a school of qirna just below the river’s gorgeous, motionless, sun-spangled surface.
Ela pursed her lips. “Mild concern I can abide, but anything more…” She fanned her face with a hand. “I get hives,” she confided quietly. “Not just on my face, but everywhere.”
“I don’t see any hives,” Ruc said.
“Of course not!” Ela laughed. “I’m having a delightful evening.”
“It might get less delightful if my men on the roof opposite start firing their flatbows.”
“Flatbows,” Ela murmured, leaning into the table once more, her eyes fixed on Ruc’s, as though the snipers concealed on the rooftops were of less than no concern. “How exciting. Who are we hunting?”
“We are not hunting anyone.”
“We are, in fact,” I cut in.
Ruc shook his head. “The men on the roof have their bolts aimed directly at your chest.”
“My chest?” Ela raised one hand, laid a languid finger just above her heart. “Here?” She slid the finger down between her breasts. “Or here?”
“Knock it the fuck off,” I growled. “Both of you. You know as well as I do, Ela, that even twenty-five years’ training on the Islands isn’t going to save you from a flatbow bolt.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll actually shoot me,” Ela protested. “We’re just getting to know each other.”
“According to your friend,” Ruc replied, nodding slightly toward Kossal, “that’s not quite right. How much can you know about a woman if she just spent half the night lying to you?”
Ruc studied Ela as he spoke, but that was just a feint. The question’s sharpened edge was directed at me.
I shook my head. “When did you get so ’Kent-kissing twitchy?”
“There was a commander I served under years ago,” Ruc replied, turning slowly to face me, “down in the Waist. Northern guy, pale skin, strange blue eyes. His name was Collum, but everyone called him Cool Collum. Not because he looked cool, I can tell you that. He was a big bastard and sweated by the bucket. We called him Cool Collum because nothing ever rattled him. Nothing spooked him. Nothing made him twitch. Local tribes would be filling our fort with arrows and Collum would stand up on the walls, perfectly exposed, like he didn’t even notice. The man absolutely refused to worry about anything.”
“Sounds familiar,” I said, glancing over at Ela.
She smiled.
“Everyone loved Collum,” Ruc went on. “Everyone admired him. He thought he was unbreakable, and so everyone else thought he was unbreakable, which meant that we thought we were a little more unbreakable, too, just by being near him.”
“I’m starting to suspect from the structure of the narrative,” Ela said, “that he wasn’t actually unbreakable.”
Ruc shook his head. “One hot, foggy morning he was walking the walls, bellowing at us the way he always did, and one of those short little jungle arrows took him through the throat.”
Kossal let out a low curse. At first I thought he was dismayed by Collum’s death—which seemed strange, all things considered—then realized he’d been ignoring the entire conversation, trying instead to coax the dead snake in his quey out through the neck of the bottle. Evidently, he found the lesson of Cool Collum’s demise less than fascinating.
“I get it,” I said, turning back to Ruc. “We’re supposed to be scared of the men you’ve got hiding in the shadows. We’re supposed to be on edge. You’ve made your point.”
“I’m not sure I have,” he said, turning to me. “I don’t care if you’re on edge. I don’t care if you’re merry, or terrified, or drunk. You asked me when I got twitchy: that was when—the moment I saw Cool Collum pitch over the wooden rampart. That was the moment I realized that taking chances might look great, it might make for great stories, but it’s a shit way to run a life, let alone a military force. I took over that unit after Collum died, and we quit taking chances. That’s why Annur put me in charge here. And I’ll tell you something else. Right now, the three of you look like one enormous fucking chance; one I could solve with the wave of a hand.”
The words were so steady, the tone so conversational, that if I’d been distracted—by Kossal prodding at the snake with a long splinter of wood, for instance—I might have missed the extent of the menace. Ruc wasn’t one to boast. He didn’t get in the ring unless he was ready to pound someone to a pulp. If he was showing his hand now, it meant he was absolutely certain he could kill us, but it also meant something else: he didn’t want to.